Auction items

Tammy and I ran around uptown today in advance of the predicted snow.  One of our stops was at an auction place.  We were there a few hours before the auction started.  There was nothing there that enticed us to return for the auction, though there were a few items we had some interest in.

The rooster weather vane actually would be more of an interest to my Uncle Curt and Aunt Cathy as they like roosters.

The suit of armor was in fact made of tin, and not that tall.  "Hey little buddy."

More trimming

I start pruning and get carried away.  After I finished pruning the apple trees I worked on the shrubs in front of the house.

Before:

As I started to trim them in 2009...

Before I started in 2012...

After...

Hmm...  in the photo the 'shorter' shrub now looks wider than tall.  In 'person' it looks better. This is a shrub that was allowed to grow and grow and should have been trimmed many years ago.  All the greenery is on the outside of the shrub so it is hard to trim it back.  I hate to cut down trees and shrubs, but this Summer it may be the end of the line for this shrub.  It depends on - now that the interior is opened up to sun - whether greenery will grow and fill inside.

I also trimmed a couple feet off the tops of the two arborvitae bushes.  These bushes also had been let go over many years.  Over the years I have been cutting the height down.  The 2009 photos was not the first time I trimmed their height down.  I'm not sure I can 'save' - or trim to be smaller - these bushes either as I may be limited in how I can sculpt them to be smaller in size. Still, for arborvitae I have noticed that greenery will re-grow out of trunks and branches to fill in open areas exposed to sun.  So there is hope.

Pruning apple trees

The weather is nice.  No snow on the ground.  I decided it would be a good time to prune my two apple trees for the year.

While I could, and perhaps should, trim the trees lower in height, I decided not to.  Overall I am happy with the number of apples I get from each tree.  I decided to mainly trim the new branches growing upward since my last pruning job last Winter.  And to thin the interior branches to give the apples a chance to get air and sun.


Tree number 1:

Tree number 2:

Fallen branch

A few days ago it was windy.  Well, for the Flathead Valley... windy.  I found this branch in the NE pasture.

I have not waked around all of the pastures to see if there is any more tree damage.

Night clouds

Late last night / early this morning just before I went to bed I stepped outside and checked the weather.  No snow.  Good.

Here is what I saw...

These photos were taken in color and not in black and white.

Sisyphus and the wood pile

Another nice day. No real rain or snow in the forecast for a week.   I surveyed my pole shed and decided to start moving the wood pile and camper from one bay to the next so I can have the vehicles next to one another.  If Sisyphus can move the boulder, I can move my wood pile.  Besides, even though there is no snow on the ground, the ground is frozen preventing me from digging fence post holes.

That's a lot of wood to move!

The start.

What I accomplished for the day.  Now do you get why it takes me so long to complete the work on one of these bays even though I worked well after the sun set?!

Actually, I did more than what is shown.  Go back to the side view photo.  I removed all the small odds and ends of wood right next to the camper above the brown concrete.

You know... I should have a contest.  Instead of guessing when the ice on some lake will melt, people can guess when I finally get everything moved. 

Odd fire extingisher

Last week, while in my attic to string the speaker wires, I took a photo of one of the odd fire extinguishers I found on the attic beams.

At least I think they are fire extinguishers as I can think of no other reason for them to be hanging in the attic.  When I look through the clear top I see a liquid inside the container.

Actually I looked these containers over in depth years ago back when I put extra insulation in the attic.  So I can't really answer (remember) right now whether these containers are glass or plastic or ceramic or some other combination.

I did a little research on Google about "glass fire extinguishers"  and I found out three things:

1. They are collectible and worth money,
2. Some versions are called fire grenades, and
3. They are very dangerous.

From Wikipedia:   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_extinguisher)

Another type of carbon-tetrachloride extinguisher was the Fire grenade. This consisted of a glass sphere filled with CTC, that was intended to be hurled at the base of a fire (early ones used salt-water, but CTC was more effective). Carbon tetrachloride was suitable for liquid and electrical fires and the extinguisers were fitted to motor vehicles. Carbon-tetrachloride extinguishers were withdrawn in the 1950s because of the chemical's toxicity–exposure to high concentrations damages the nervous system and internal organs. Additionally, when used on a fire, the heat can convert CTC to Phosgene gas,formerly used as a chemical weapon.

Another article on the fire grenades is found here:  http://www.thegavel.net/grenade.html

Other articles mentioned how carbon-tetrachloride robs the fire of oxygen.  That is both good and bad.  The bad is if you are nearby and need oxygen also.

For now I will leave them be.  Initially I thought they were neat.  Now that I learned more about them I would like to remove them but I don't want the risk of accidentally breaking them.   They have remained intact in the attic for 50 to 70 years - the range between when the house was built and when it appears these type of fire extinguishers were taken off the market (late 1950s)

Now... if someone wants to buy them and remove them, I would be fine with that.

Also, in the photo you can see how old my attic is.  Instead of plywood sheets for the roof, the builders used 1 inch boards.  And why the long bamboo pole is in the attic... who knows!

Larry Light

The following photos show a light Larry left me with.  I didn't notice the light until a few days after my uncles and aunts left last June.  My uncles Larry (taking the lead) and Curt re-wired my barn when they were here in June.

For the electrical outlet my second well pump will plug into, Larry installed a Ground Fault Interrupter.  The unit also has a small light.  Now whenever I am outside after dark in the back yard I think of my uncles and how they re-wired my barn for me.  I call it my "Larry Light".

An opening has been made

Well, this time I was right.  I only needed one more day to finish clearing an area in the pole shed.  Oh... and I needed one pickup as I moved a pickup load of wood to finish my cleaning.

I forgot to take a "before" photo.  The best I could find was a photo from November 2010.  The blue bars indicate the section I cleared.  The wood and other stuff mostly filling this area was six feet high and the length of a pickup.

Wow.  It is amazing how clean it looks.  It certainly took me long enough to clean, clear and sort all the stuff that used to be here.  It hasn't looked like this since 2002 or 2003 when I last sorted and cleared this area.  Then bit by bit over time I placed various boards, pieces of wood, and other items in here until it was huge unorganized pile.

This is one step.  I have lots of odds and ends of wood. It will take several iterations later this year until it is completely organized by board width and length.  Just as my fence work seems never ending, so does the sorting of my boards and wood.

Ideally I would like to move my pickup camper over to this location so my pickup and Tammy's van can be side by side in the pole shed.  Ha!  That's a gigantic project for another day.

Broken fence wire

The deer are at it again.  I had another barb wire to fix.

After looking at the following photo I took of my repair job, I could have done better.  I should have attached the broken wire to the same level on the stay.

Another day. Another attempt.  Look better?

Here is an example of why I don't like the vinyl fences.  They are suppose to be maintenance free, but they break so easily.  This is one of my neighbor's fence.  I don't know if it was vandalized or if a deer tried to jump over/through the fence.

Later in the afternoon Tammy helped me clear out the spot in the tool shed for her vehicle.  Each time I work on clearing the spot I think it will take only one more time to finish.   Even with Tammy's help it appears it will take one more time for me to finish the job.

It was nice to have Tammy help me.  We moved the rest of my wooden fence posts over to the hay shed.  To ensure the posts don't roll down in their new location we pounded a couple of metal posts into the ground.  Tammy bravely held the posts upright while I used a sledgehammer to hammer the posts into the frozen ground.

Why in the attic?

One of my uncles asked me why I ran my speaker wire in the house's attic instead of under the molding along the floor.  In case you were also wondering, here is why:

The living room has no molding.   (Yes, I plan to eventually get rid of this old ugly green carpet and replace it with wood/laminate flooring.)

The speakers are mounted near the ceiling.  Notice: no sign of speaker wire.  (Yes, the hated red shag carpet will also eventually be replaced.)

By the way, I ran the microphone speaker balancing test last night. The home theater system sounds great.  Even when watching the movie, Date Night, which is not a movie to really test the home theater's abilities, the sound was rich.  I should have had this home theater setup a few nights ago.  Then maybe I could have understand half of what Jeff Bridges mumbled in the movie, Crazy Heart.

Shelves and speakers

A busy end to the year.   This morning Tammy and I washed all the house windows inside and out.  It was sunny in the morning and I noticed a layer of dust on the windows.  We also vacuumed the rugs.

In the afternoon we put up brackets in her office closet so she could hang some shelves.

In the evening I hung four of my home theater's speakers (the mid room and back speakers), and wired all of them into the home theater receiver.  Now that we've eaten supper it is time to run the microphone setup that balances and adjusts the speakers based on the room configuration.  Then we'll watch a movie.  Too bad I watched Iron Man 2 last night, that would have been a good test of the speaker's surround sound.

Happy New Year!

Alone in the Wilderness

I finally got around to watching the documentary that my uncles Curt and Larry, and friend Jeff, all recommended to watch.

"This documentary tells the story of Dick Proenneke who, in the late 1960s, built his own cabin in the wilderness at the base of the Aleutian Peninsula, in what is now Lake Clark National Park.

Using color footage he shot himself, Proenneke traces how he came to this remote area, selected a homestead site and built his log cabin completely by himself.

The documentary covers his first year in-country, showing his day-to-day activities and the passing of the seasons as he sought to scratch out a living alone in the wilderness."

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437806/

The documentary is about an hour long and apparently has been shown on PBS.   The documentary is very interesting.  This guy had an amazing talent.  He made wooden handles for his tools then built a cabin that allowed him to live through an Alaskan winter.

He was in his early 50s when he built the cabin and lived there until he was 83 years old.

Speaker wires in attic

To go with my new TV I bought an Onkyo HTS5400 7.1 home theater system.  Since my living room is so long I had to buy more speaker wire so the two rear speakers could go against the back wall.

With all my new components: TV, home theater with  a receiver, 7 speakers and a sub woofer, a DVR, and my old VCR, I have wires everywhere.  Tammy wasn't too thrilled with the home theater system with the speakers as that meant wires strung all about the room.  She thinks it looks too much like I'm a red-neck.

Even though it was more work that running the wires along the ceiling, I decided to run the speaker wires through the attic.

I wanted to put the wires into wall behind the receiver and TV but that was a "no-go".   The wall is an outside wall filled with insulation.  In case I could fish a wire through the insulation along a stud I went up and checked out the attic.  Nope.  The top of the wall is covered by a board and the roof is a low roof.   No way to drill a hole into the wall from the attic.

Then I thought about running the speaker wires "kind of" outside the wall.  A number of years ago I added panels of R-12 insulation between the wood siding and the plywood outer part of the wall.  I could drill through the drywall and plywood then run the wire up under the insulation panel.

When I looked at the wood siding I remembered that I had been concerned that gravity would pull down the 2 inch insulation panels and the wood siding so I nailed them real good, and used ribbed nails.  I did a good job as the wood siding and insulation panels are fastened tight to the wall.  I didn't want to ruin my insulating work so I discarded this idea.

So I ran the speaker wires up the inside wall to the ceiling.  I do have a window and curtains nearby and that camouflages most of the wire.

In addition to the hole for the wires to enter the ceiling, I drilled four more holes for the back speakers and the mid-room speakers.  I ran some stiff wire up the holes so I could find the wires and holes once I got in my attic.

Years ago I insulated my attic real good, so moving around it was harder than usual.  In some areas the insulation was so thick I had trouble finding the wires poking up through the ceiling.

Tammy fed wire up into the attic and I grunted and moaned as I tried to move about the attic by keeping on the studs and not falling through the ceiling.  The entry point for the wire, and the rear speakers, were along outside walls with the speakers being in corners.  Very difficult to move around.   Grunting and moaning did help me move about.   Tammy found my sounds humorous.  That was because she stayed in the living room and didn't have to move about the attic.

Fortunately I bought two 100 ft rolls of speaker wire as each roll only wired two speakers, with some wire left over.  That left over wire will go to my front speakers mounted on the wall by the TV as the wire I bought was 16 gauge, an improvement over the wire that came with the speakers.

This wiring job took all afternoon.  Even though I wore a coat, hat and face mask, I had enough of insulation.  Once all the wires were threaded though the ceiling and to the speakers I quit for the day as taking a shower was my main priority.  Tomorrow I will hook up the speakers.


Photos:

The attic for the original (core) part of the house.  The roof has a steeper pitch so I could actually partially stand up in this section.   Here is the amount of insulation I have up here.

Below is where I uncovered a walkway.  After I had insulated the attic years ago I had left some boards over the studs to allow for walking.  I'm glad I left those boards.

The house was built in stages over the years.  When a new addition was built they cut a hole through the roof to allow access to the new section.   Whoever cut the hole must have been small.  This is the opening in the attic between the core of the house and the living room.  And this is after I had enlarged the opening back when I had added the insulation.

The attic over the living room.  Notice the roof isn't as high.  Here I had to move about on hands and knees.  Also notice the "walkway" I had left earlier.

This gives you an idea of how fast the roof slopes down.

Here is my "path" to where the speaker wires come up into the ceiling (at the far end).  Here I had to move about on the studs on each side of the "path".  At the far end I had to lay to reach the wire coming through the ceiling and hope the ceiling wouldn't give and I drop down.

At the top of the photo you can also see how I ran the speaker wires along the roof.  This was to keep the wire out of the way if I have to move around the attic again.  And I wasn't sure if the wire would be ok to be buried under insulation.

Flat tire finally fixed

I have spent the past month wrestling with patching my bicycle inner tube.  Or I should day: tubes.  It has been frustrating.

I've had:

• value stems come out of the tube  (unrepairable) 

• tires that hold air until you put them in the tire, then hours later they were flat.  Removing the tubes, filling them with air, putting them underwater to find no leaks, putting them back in the tire to have them go flat - frustrating.

• old patches come loose and leak again,

• new patches not hold tight.  I've tried glue-less patches and they don't have a good success rate.  The local bicycle shop still hasn't got a new shipment of kits with patches and glue.

• a tube get ruined when I roughed it up prior to patching.  One time I used a new metal 'rougher' and in thoughtlessness/absentmindedness/frustration pressed too hard on the tube.

• tubes get pinched when putting the tube and tire back on.  This is because the tire fits incredibly tight on the rim that often I had to use a tire iron to put the tire back on the rim and then I accidentally punctured the tube.  *augh!!!*

• One time I was drying a tube over the wood stove after I had tested it underwater only to have the glue on an old patch melt and then leak.

In addition to my bicycle's bad tube, I had four old inner tubes that had been problems in getting patched in the past.  With all I've been doing this month I haven't devoted my full attention to patching my tubes.  Instead I fit the work in here and there.  Over the month I have been working on this problem I was down to my final tube when I finally patched it.

It has been three or four days now, and 20 miles, so - cross my fingers and knock on wood - the tire is holding air.  Good, as I hate to think my streak of riding at least one mile each month would be broken.   The last time I did not ride any miles in a month was way back in June 1983.

Keep your chin up

Static cat

Christmas turkey

From the cooker to the plate...  yum!  Tammy made it all.  Merry Christmas.